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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?

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Speaker 1: From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen. I'm Caroline. So there was a

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Speaker 1: recent comment left on the Facebook fan page for Stuff

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Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You, which, if you aren't a fan yet,

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Speaker 1: you should do that right now stop listening to this

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Speaker 1: podcast to the Facebook. Um. But this we have to

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Speaker 1: quote this comment because it relates a lot to what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about today. And this is from a guy

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Speaker 1: named Morgan, and he says, Okay, I've been wondering for

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Speaker 1: a while, do you guys use a different voice when

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Speaker 1: you're making the show. I've heard hints and glimmers of

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Speaker 1: a Southern accent, but I think I speak for all

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Speaker 1: of us when I say you should do one podcast

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Speaker 1: in your natural voice. So Caroline, stop, stop with your

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Speaker 1: cookie voice. I'll finally let it out. It sounds badder.

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Speaker 1: I am from Georgia. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: the Pokay. I popped my teeth out. Um. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: we just thought it was kind of funny when when

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Speaker 1: we read it because it is this is this is

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Speaker 1: my natural voice, Caroline, and this is mine. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is how we sound. Sorry, I hope this doesn't ruin

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Speaker 1: the magic for a if you if you catch the

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Speaker 1: occasional flat vowel for me, it's because my dad is

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Speaker 1: from Michigan, and I actually did this vacation of Michigan

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Speaker 1: not too long ago, so I might have brought some

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Speaker 1: back with me, a little bit of Michigan. This is

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Speaker 1: this is what I sound like. I don't try to

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Speaker 1: I don't try to sound breathy or anything like that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm from I'm born and raised in the South, and

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Speaker 1: people when I go out of town typically can't guess

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Speaker 1: where I'm from. Yeah, I mean too, And it's kind

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Speaker 1: of kind of a fun game we can play. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like where are you from? The best response I

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Speaker 1: got once was someone guess I was from New Mexico,

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Speaker 1: because exactly it was the only place that could guess

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Speaker 1: that had no identifiable accent. But my Southern accent certainly

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Speaker 1: slips out every now and then. But while we're not

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Speaker 1: focusing so much on accents today, it did seem to

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Speaker 1: fit into the fact that we're talking about vocal differences

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Speaker 1: between men and women, because I I wondered for a

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Speaker 1: while why men have deeper voices than women typically, and

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Speaker 1: not surprisingly, it goes back to anatomy, right. Um, And

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Speaker 1: actually we've we've sort of talked about the differences in

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Speaker 1: men and women, um in development development wise, when we

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Speaker 1: talked about the height in the Height episode, about how

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Speaker 1: men take a little bit longer to develop during puberty

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Speaker 1: and so that lets them get taller, stronger. Um, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of the same thing at work as far as

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Speaker 1: vocal quality and vocal pitch too, because men, uh, in puberty,

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Speaker 1: they have all the testosterone floating around and that actually

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Speaker 1: helps the larynx, the voice box what we think of

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Speaker 1: as the atoms apple to grow larger than a dozen women,

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Speaker 1: so we don't necessarily most of us ladies don't have

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Speaker 1: a big larynx hanging out protruding example box. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: just means that men tend to developed more thyroid cartilage

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Speaker 1: and that's all then, adoms apple is I don't like

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Speaker 1: thinking about cartilage in my throat. Wasn't it described as

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Speaker 1: a shield, a cartilage shield. Yeah, there's like a shield

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Speaker 1: shaped bit of cartilage around your neck and the front

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Speaker 1: portion is what the is the atom's apple. I'm looking

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Speaker 1: at a diagram right now of of the larynx because

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Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a visual learner, and the voice box

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Speaker 1: is quite a complicated set of muscles and tissues and flaps.

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Speaker 1: There's a fatty pad, yes, the epiglottis, which is the key,

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Speaker 1: the key flap that opens and closes. Officially, it is

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Speaker 1: a fibromuscular tube which extends from the base of the

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Speaker 1: skull to the esophagus, and it's part of the pharynx

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Speaker 1: and it's nestled between the throat where the food goes

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Speaker 1: down and the trachea, which is your air pipe, right,

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Speaker 1: and we have the vocal chords or folds as as

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Speaker 1: they are also called, that are situated in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the larynx, and as we breathe in certain muscles

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Speaker 1: open and closed really quickly, which allows for pressure changes

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Speaker 1: that creates sound. And some of those flaps around there

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Speaker 1: also keep you from inhaling broccoli, and they failed one

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Speaker 1: day while I was at lunch, So now I have

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Speaker 1: a broccoli plant growing in my lungs. Yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: think it's changed the way I sound, though, has changed

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Speaker 1: the way you smell um. So we'll go in a

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Speaker 1: little bit more into the how how that vocal cord

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Speaker 1: structure affects voices, because, as we'll learn, the tension of

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Speaker 1: in length of vocal core will determine all you sold?

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Speaker 1: What do you sound like? This? Correct? Christian? And men?

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Speaker 1: Men have longer, thicker vocal chords. I'm doing a terrible

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Speaker 1: job of that um which which makes their their voices deeper. Yes,

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Speaker 1: So let's just go over some just some basic differences

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Speaker 1: between male and female voices. This is coming a lot

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Speaker 1: of us, is coming from the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics.

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Speaker 1: And for starters, obviously, female pitch typically higher. The average

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Speaker 1: pitch for a woman's voice is a hundred and eighty

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Speaker 1: two two and twenty hurts compared to a male average pitch,

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Speaker 1: which is a hundred two hundred and hurts. But while

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Speaker 1: women's voices also will deepen with puberty, it's only it's

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Speaker 1: like what an octave half an octave for women that

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Speaker 1: it decreases and men their voices drop one octave really suddenly.

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Speaker 1: And when you hear boys voices cracking and they get

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Speaker 1: all embarrassed, that's actually just their larynx trying to adjust

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Speaker 1: to its new size. Just in terms of overall voice

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Speaker 1: quality descriptions, women tend to have more breathiness, higher pitch,

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Speaker 1: and larger vowels space We enunciate more clearly too, whereas

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Speaker 1: men have more creek intention in their voice and creak,

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Speaker 1: creaky voices exactly what it sounds like, that's what they

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Speaker 1: used to describe someone who, uh, how's more of that

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Speaker 1: going on? So one thing that that really stood out

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Speaker 1: to me with all of this um, with all of

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Speaker 1: this vocal research that we did, is what an incredible

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Speaker 1: relationship there is between this anatomy that we don't even see,

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Speaker 1: this complicated larynx structure, cartilage stuff down in your throat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so many gender stereotypes that come out of it

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Speaker 1: because we infer so much information about someone based on

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Speaker 1: what they sound like, Right, Kristen, didn't you mentioned before

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Speaker 1: we even started recording that some listeners thought that you

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Speaker 1: and Molly were both blonde eased on how you sounded exactly.

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Speaker 1: We we infer people's gender, their their race or socio

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Speaker 1: economic class. They're their height, there where they come from,

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Speaker 1: they're they're hot, their personalities, all of these things and

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Speaker 1: a lot of this would come under the umbrella category

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Speaker 1: of long term speech features. Right, that's how we just

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Speaker 1: naturally talk when we're not putting on uh, some fake

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Speaker 1: accent or silly voices or anything. I can. Um, I

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Speaker 1: can do a silly voice, and that would be a

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Speaker 1: short term vocal quality. And sometimes, you know, maybe if

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Speaker 1: I'm like Marilyn Monroe or Kim Kardashian with those breathy voices,

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Speaker 1: I might be doing it to try to make you

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Speaker 1: think about me in a certain way, like Hello, Kristen,

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Speaker 1: I'd be like, Carolyn, why are you coming? I know right,

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Speaker 1: you'd automatically assume I was coming on to you and

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Speaker 1: that I was super feminine and sexy if you couldn't

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Speaker 1: see me. Um. But a long term vocal quality is

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Speaker 1: is just how I'm speaking right now. And one long

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Speaker 1: term vocal quality that we really wanted to focus on

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Speaker 1: again was that deeper voice we associate with men, because

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Speaker 1: the question was our deeper voices more attractive as we

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Speaker 1: have this kind of cultural association with deep voice Lumberjack, Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: um actually, and study after study found that this was true,

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Speaker 1: this assumption. Um. They had women listened to recordings of

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Speaker 1: men speaking and the men with the deeper voices were

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Speaker 1: considered were assumed to be uh, taller, stronger, more attractive,

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Speaker 1: and with harry chests. Yeah, I don't know why we

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Speaker 1: thought of like the brawny man when when a guy

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Speaker 1: has a deep voice, and of course it's not it's

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Speaker 1: obviously not true for everybody. You know, deep voices come

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Speaker 1: in all sorts of different packages. But the assumption exactly

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Speaker 1: and this is coming from a study by called Men's

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Speaker 1: Voices and Women's Choices by researchers named Sarah Collins. And uh,

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Speaker 1: if we go to another study or actually a series

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Speaker 1: of studies by David Putts, who is an anthropologist who's

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Speaker 1: now at Penn State who has studied the evolution of

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Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism, including vocal traits, he he found similar he

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Speaker 1: can to similar conclusions in a study that he did

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Speaker 1: where he recruited all of these male college students to

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Speaker 1: come in and just talk about themselves, and he recorded

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Speaker 1: cord of them talking about themselves, and then he tinkered

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Speaker 1: with their pitches so that someone be higher than than

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Speaker 1: as they actually speak and some lower. And then he

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Speaker 1: had women come in and listen to the recordings and

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Speaker 1: they had to write which one, which one of these

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Speaker 1: guys they would most like to have one night stands

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Speaker 1: with just quick flings and lo and behold always the

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Speaker 1: deeper voices, especially when women were ovulating. Yeah, what is

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Speaker 1: it about us in the ovulation? We just got we

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Speaker 1: need a taller, stronger, and deeper voices, apparently when we're ovulating.

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Speaker 1: And he wanted to know why deeper voices might be

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Speaker 1: more innately attractive, and he thinks that it might be

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Speaker 1: because it advertises testosterone levels, because kind of like with

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Speaker 1: the height discussion that we had a couple of weeks ago, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: because the testosterone influences the vocal core development and deepens

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Speaker 1: the voice, right, And it was funny I was reading

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Speaker 1: UM there was an NPR transcript they didn't interview with

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Speaker 1: with David Putts and um as an evolutionary psychologist at

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Speaker 1: UC Santa Barbara. And David Putts actually started doing this

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Speaker 1: research when he was at Michigan State, I believe. And

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Speaker 1: he was inspired to do it because he was at

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Speaker 1: the mall and heard these teenage boys all of a

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Speaker 1: sudden talking and he's really deep much of voices, and

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Speaker 1: he turned around to see what was going on and

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Speaker 1: there was a pretty lady with an ear shot, and

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Speaker 1: he thought, well, they're trying to impress there, and but

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Speaker 1: why why is the deep voice automatically something that they

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Speaker 1: go to to try to get a woman at a

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Speaker 1: tension has to be a tough guy or something. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe it has to do with and this is this

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Speaker 1: came up in that the study men's voices and women's choices.

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Speaker 1: But maybe it has something to do with the peak

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Speaker 1: shift effect. You don't even have to see that person

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Speaker 1: that that woman in the mall, wouldn't necessarily have to

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Speaker 1: see those teenage boys talking like that. The deep voices,

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Speaker 1: they could possibly trigger this peak shift effect, which causes

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Speaker 1: stronger responses to stimuli that are at the extremes of

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Speaker 1: certain categories. So for instance, as a woman, my voice

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Speaker 1: and other female voices are at a higher pitch. So

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Speaker 1: at the other end of that um vocal distribution, we

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Speaker 1: have a very deep voice many octaves below mine, and

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Speaker 1: the peak shift effect would say that I would just

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Speaker 1: automatically hear a deeper voice and be drawn to it

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Speaker 1: because it's so different from your exactly. Um. It's interesting

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Speaker 1: reading about the reactions that these women judges had in

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Speaker 1: some of these vocal studies, because you know, we've talked

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Speaker 1: a little bit about how they were attracted to these

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Speaker 1: guys with the deeper voices. But um, they thought that

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Speaker 1: men with a higher pitch we're smaller, thinner, slower, I

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Speaker 1: don't even know what white, slower, I don't even less persuasive,

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Speaker 1: and more nervous. And actually both men and women with

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Speaker 1: higher pitch were thought to be less competent overall, less honest,

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Speaker 1: and less persuasive. And the thing was, I think you

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Speaker 1: you've already mentioned this, Caroline, but there was like none

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Speaker 1: of these correlations held up, None of these assumptions that

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Speaker 1: the women had about deeper voices in physicality held up

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Speaker 1: except for their way, right, But just because you know

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Speaker 1: you hear a deep voice certainly does not imply from

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Speaker 1: this study then there's chest hair under that T shirt,

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Speaker 1: or that they're any taller or bigger or stronger. And

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Speaker 1: it's I mean it's true for women too, for for

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Speaker 1: be more attractive in men, kind of deeper voices, breathy,

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Speaker 1: Right back to that NPR transcript, I was looking at

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Speaker 1: her frame Roger Rabbit. She's voiced by Kathleen Turner, who

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Speaker 1: I think is just fabulous. Promancing the Stone is one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. But Kathleen Turner has a very

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Speaker 1: not only a deep voice deeper than normal fur your

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Speaker 1: average one, but it's it's very breathy too. And that's

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Speaker 1: just really you have lazy vocal cords. Yes, I had

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Speaker 1: to break it to you. Well, I'll massage that, like

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Speaker 1: when it comes from air whistling through a gap. At

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Speaker 1: the back of the vocal cords, and women actually have

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Speaker 1: speak with a little more breath. Um. But Harvard psychologist

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Speaker 1: David Fineberg attributes this breathy feminine sexiness uh, to accentuating

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Speaker 1: I've got really gappy vocal cords, right, can you hear that?

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Speaker 1: And and we read, uh, we read about studies vocal

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Speaker 1: studies kind of like the ones we've already talked about,

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Speaker 1: but that we're done for gay men, and people jumped

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Speaker 1: in a more feminine way. Not necessarily just like a

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Speaker 1: phonetic variation right in linguistic parlance, Yeah, the study refers

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Speaker 1: to the spectral skewness of the s consonant that is

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Speaker 1: these kind of um like vocal stereotypes that we attribute

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Speaker 1: to the g LBT community are extensions of those vocal

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Speaker 1: stereotypes we saw in that study of heterosexual women listening

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Speaker 1: to men speaking and assuming that they had the chest

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Speaker 1: hair and all of that. We again and again we

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Speaker 1: are attributing all of these these traits two people based

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Speaker 1: on how our our larynx is constructed, right, I mean?

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Speaker 1: And you know, they the researchers do point out in

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Speaker 1: have to do with you know, movies, TV radio, that

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Speaker 1: we we we see someone presented as very masculine or

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Speaker 1: And of course there there's a lot of interaction between

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Speaker 1: your environment and how you speak. Um In in one

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Speaker 1: of the studies, the one that was talking about how

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Speaker 1: we make assumptions about sexual orientation based on vocalizations, some

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Speaker 1: think that speech differences might be learned socially conventional ways

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Speaker 1: of speaking. You know, when I am hanging out with

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Speaker 1: a with the Southern Crew especially, it reminds me of

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Speaker 1: a and um, I if I if I watch my

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Speaker 1: mom is a big fan of SEC football, college football,

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Speaker 1: closer we get to the fourth quarter, I mean it

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Speaker 1: comes out, you know, a little bit get or done. Yeah, my, my, my,

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Speaker 1: my southern accent comes comes out of the closet a

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Speaker 1: little bit more. Yeah, It's just it's the same way

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Speaker 1: when I'm with my dad in Michigan. Neither one of

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Speaker 1: us really has any sort of accent when we're in Georgia.

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Speaker 1: But like the closer it gets to going on vacation,

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Speaker 1: up in the mitten, the the flatter his valves get. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: don't mess with the mitten. Now you know how to

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Speaker 1: make that don't mess with the mitten sound far more menacing, Caroline.

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Speaker 1: You want to exert some some dominance if I if

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Speaker 1: I from the you know, the lower portion of the

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Speaker 1: United States, him and pointing the finger at your your mitten. Hey,

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Speaker 1: you should maybe lower your your vocal register, exert more

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Speaker 1: dominance with the mitten that we I mean, you're looking

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Speaker 1: at me. You know, I'm not a serious person. I'm terrified.

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Speaker 1: The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that

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Speaker 1: We've talked about deeper voices signaling sexual attraction, but deeper voices,

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Speaker 1: especially in men, are a signal even among men to

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Speaker 1: each other of dominance. Right. They even men are more

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Speaker 1: likely to rate other dudes with deep voices as more dominant,

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Speaker 1: although it did talk kind of about how men who

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Speaker 1: rate themselves as dominant are less likely to rate other

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Speaker 1: menu ates dominant. It might be competition or something. It

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Speaker 1: might be a little complicated. Um, but while the deeper

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Speaker 1: voices is an auditory signal of dominance for women, the

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Speaker 1: threat among other women comes with highly feminine voices. And

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Speaker 1: it might have something to do with some research from

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Speaker 1: Susan Hughes at Albright College who found that both men

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Speaker 1: and women with sexy voices also tend to be more

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Speaker 1: symmetrical and have traditionally sexy body types. So it might

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Speaker 1: be an auditory thing reinforcing the visual of oh wow,

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Speaker 1: not only are you just bonkers attractive, you have an

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Speaker 1: incredible voice. And it could be hormonal, right She talked

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Speaker 1: about like if if hormones are more able to give

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Speaker 1: you a curvy hourglass, maybe they also give you a

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Speaker 1: sexy Jessica Rabbit voice. Perhaps I don't know if that's

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Speaker 1: sounded accurate at all. And another fun fact from Susan Hughes,

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Speaker 1: people with attractive voices seem to have more sex partners

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Speaker 1: over their lifetime hormones. I mean, who knew that your

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Speaker 1: voice box has such a profound impact. I know it

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Speaker 1: helps me at karaoke. I don't know what people think

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Speaker 1: of me when I'm just talking. I haven't heard you

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Speaker 1: sing yet. We'll have to have a special, special musical episode.

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Speaker 1: So we've covered a ton of studies and a lot

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Speaker 1: of different aspects of voice, how our voices develop, and

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Speaker 1: how people perceive us based on our voice. So what

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Speaker 1: do you think? Do you think, Caroline is what's what's

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Speaker 1: the takeaway from all of this? I think the takeaway

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Speaker 1: is that people are judge mcjudge Stein's and that they

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Speaker 1: are going to judge that you are a certain way

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Speaker 1: because of the way you sound if they haven't seen

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Speaker 1: you or interacted with you. But it you know, just

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Speaker 1: because you have a deep voice doesn't mean you're six

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Speaker 1: five and a football player. And if you're just right

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Speaker 1: with a hairy chest, um, but you know, if you

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Speaker 1: have a high pitch voice, that doesn't mean you're weak

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Speaker 1: or slow. Or you know any of those things either. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe it's another another way to keep us cognizant of

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Speaker 1: the gender stereotypes that we just automatically might make knee

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Speaker 1: jerk judgments. And I think one major thing to take

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Speaker 1: away is that this is really how I speak. It

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Speaker 1: is yes, and this is and this is how I

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Speaker 1: speak as well, unless I'm watching football, my mother hanging

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Speaker 1: out in Michigan and whatever. Yeah. I think one one

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Speaker 1: final vocal anecdote, I think that the the most striking

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Speaker 1: difference between a voice that I heard and the physicality

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Speaker 1: that I've built up in my mind of how that

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Speaker 1: person looked and how that person actually looks in real life.

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Speaker 1: Terry Gross the host of fresh Air on NPR, which

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Speaker 1: I love. If I could somehow high or Terry Gross

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Speaker 1: to read to me every night, I would do it.

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Speaker 1: I love I love her voice, and some people don't

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Speaker 1: like it, but I I really enjoy her voice. And

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Speaker 1: the first time I saw a picture, it just it

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Speaker 1: did not match up at all. Um for so, I

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Speaker 1: imagine her was these long curls for some reason, and

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Speaker 1: she has uh, pretty much a crew cut. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: it was just, uh, that's my that's my voice story. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So now now I would like to invite listeners to

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Speaker 1: write in thinking are explaining to us whether our voices match?

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Speaker 1: Are our faces on Facebook? Yeah, we've got our picture

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Speaker 1: up there. Yeah. Yeah, judge us. We we just our

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Speaker 1: message take away message was don't judge, and now we're

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Speaker 1: asking no, I mean, but don't judge us in a

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Speaker 1: mean way. Obviously, we we just can't. We're sensitive people.

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Speaker 1: We can't handle it. Yeah, we can handle it, don't

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Speaker 1: most with admitten exactly. Well, again, if you have any

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Speaker 1: thoughts send our way on voices, email us smam stuff

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And we've got an

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Speaker 1: email here to read That ties in with actually a

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Speaker 1: number of episodes, but it's in response to our episode

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Speaker 1: on women's intuition, Right, Sydney writes A couple of weeks ago,

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Speaker 1: a friend told me that since I started on estrogen,

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Speaker 1: I'm the male to female transsexual former freemason who emailed

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Speaker 1: last year I have grown some empathy, whereas he had

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Speaker 1: previously insisted that I utterly lacked it. Now I hear

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Speaker 1: your podcast on empathy and intuition, I've entertained at the

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Speaker 1: notion that he's clearly wrong, which I had already asserted

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Speaker 1: on the grounds that I feel I was empathetic before.

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Speaker 1: But part of me hopes that not too many people

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Speaker 1: hear this and lose the superstition that I now have

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Speaker 1: the benefit of these internal enhancements. Winky faith, And You've

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Speaker 1: got me wondering about some of the other mental and

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Speaker 1: emotional changes I've associated with the estrogen therapy. How much

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Speaker 1: of it is, how much of it is all in

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Speaker 1: my head? And how much is well actually in my head. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that at some point we need to do

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Speaker 1: an episode dedicated just to testosterm on just to estrogen,

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Speaker 1: because they come up all the wonky things they do.

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Speaker 1: Um well again, if you have an email to send

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Speaker 1: our way, Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works is the

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Speaker 1: address to direct it to. And also find us on Facebook.

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Speaker 1: Head over there if anything to see what we look like. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you have our voices, manage our picture and follow

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00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: us on Twitter as well at Mom's Stuff podcast, And

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Speaker 1: then you can check out our blog Dear in the week,

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Speaker 1: It's stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works

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00:24:03,840 --> 00:24:10,440
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

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00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,479
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as

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00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.

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00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:20,520
Speaker 1: The How Stuff Works I Fine app has arrived. Download

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Speaker 1: it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented

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Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you